Fishing Partner

Its a shot you'll love no matter the execution - which isn't bad.

I noticed after I uploaded that I must have bumped the enlarger making it looks a bit soft and out of focus.

A cute picture that with some burning and dodging could be very good.

blansky, where do you see room for improvement with dodging and burning? The sunlit areas, water and her hair are getting a stop more light and the sunny spot under her a stop and a half, for reference on what it took to get this far.

jeffreythree said:

blansky, where do you see room for improvement with dodging and burning? The sunlit areas, water and her hair are getting a stop more light and the sunny spot under her a stop and a half, for reference on what it took to get this far.

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It's a bit difficult without seeing what you'd consider an "un-bumped" shot and it being slightly soft. But just in general, in portraits, your interest should be drawn to the face first. Then after that the surrounding areas to compliment what you are trying to say in the picture. In this case a cute little girl fishing in a pond. Anything that detracts from that you'd probably want to lessen it's impact. But this all has to be done somewhat delicately and not obvious. What I would do is to crop with your hands, the girl's face and upper body down to her arm. That is your main picture, and everything else is secondary. Then take your hands away. Whatever is detracting with that main subject needs to be made secondary. .... So first thing is the bright spot in the foreground should be darkened a bit, then the highlight on her pants, as well as her leg and socks. Remember we want to be directed to the face first, and on low or medium key portraits, the face should be the lightest, and if anything else is, it becomes the dominant feature of your picture. So, once you have those two hot spots toned down, then we have the background. We want depth to the picture so we want some action there but only to enhance the fishing narrative and not to drag your eye back there. So I'd tone down the back hotspots a wee bit then vignette/darken the area behind to the top left and top slightly too. The hotspot on the top of her head, is probably blown out of the neg so I'd probably let it be and keep some of the stippled light behind her so it doesn't look strange. The area behind her long hair, is also fairly hot and I'd drop it down slightly too but not too much because it adds depth and 3 dimension. The next area you have to discern is whenever you have an area with strong contrast like the pond/canal where the white/gray and the dark shadows collide, it draws your eye, so you may want to take that impact area of white/gray down slightly as well. Some may say, well you could also crop the area behind her, the left of the picture out to remove it's influence, but I like small people, in environmental situations to have a lot of room around them, to visually enforce their size and vulnerability. Remember burning and dodging are done with a scalpel and not a sledgehammer, and your ultimate result should look completely natural.

Thanks blansky, now I have a clearer idea of what to do next on this one.

jeffreythree said:

Thanks blansky, now I have a clearer idea of what to do next on this one.

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With any picture you print, it's a good test to turn it upside down, and discover what immediately jumps at you. If it's what you want, you did good. If it's something else......back to the darkroom. A good process is to initially print 2 well exposed prints. And let them dry. One you keep as your base print in a file with exposure/paper/chemistry all described. The second one you mark up with each area you plan to burn or dodge with how much exposure etc. When you finally get your "show print" you keep track of everything you did written down with that second print so you can go back and duplicate it or tweak it some more after you've looked at it for a while. If you don't keep track of this stuff, you'll wish you did because making reprints, you'd have to start back to square one.